The e-Enabling of the aviation platforms and infrastructures, both onboard and off-board, have resulted in interconnected physical systems and supply chain infrastructures that are now a potential target for the dynamic and growing cyber security threats due to greater access to the networked computing systems. Aviation platforms and infrastructures are complex systems that involve hierarchically networked, embedded systems and controllers with varying operational criticality, reliability, and availability requirements. In various embodiments, embedded systems and controllers are increasingly hosted on general purpose computing devices hardware, commercial software operating systems, and specific custom applications performing the intended system functions. These onboard embedded systems and controllers may be networked via Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Aeronautical Radio, Inc. (ARINC) standards based protocols such as the Internet Protocol (IP) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) wired and wireless communications and networking protocols. In addition, the onboard systems may be networked with off-board computing systems via standard IETF IP based protocols such as User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Transmission Control Program (TCP).
The increased use of standards based computing and communication protocols may allow for seamless integration of the e-Enabled architecture, but may also increases the vulnerability to cyber security attacks. Furthermore, the current definition of airplane network data flows is not in a machine understandable form requiring manual interpretation for the creation of network filter rules suitable for a domain guard use. This can lead to errors and coverage gaps. Thus, there is a need for system and method for increased filter capabilities that can prevent unauthorized network flows based on changing system contexts on e-Enabled aviation platforms.